Singapore Expats

I am potentially moving from HK to SG in January and I will get a lump sum to move myself. I have a 2 bed apartment worth of furniture inc king bed and tv etc but not white goods like fridge and washer.

Crown have given me a quote of S$10k for a 25ft container and S$8k for half a container.

Has anybody moved recently and can recommend any cheaper options?

We have a very nice dining table that we want to keep and I will be reluctant to sell my tv and iMac but other than that we could scrap most things but I think it will probably cost more and be a big hassle to replace everything. I am tempted tho.

Any other options for moving our lives to the red dot?




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We used Allied Pickford and they offered us a "van" option which is a large wooden crate designed to fit into 1/4 or 1/3 of a container. Cheaper than a half container. Also, you could save more money with a van. Have them drop it off. You self pack it. You lose insurance coverage this way but save on the labor.

Thanks strong eagle. I will take a look at them today!


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Be aware that your shipment may wait while another van or two is found to complete the container. Also, after giving me an agreed upon price for their volume computations, they attempted to charge me unused space in one of the vans. This was in Singapore.

I think there is a break-even point for those on a budget. A king-size bed is one thing I just wouldn't bring, not only volume versus value, but there is too much risk you'll never get it into a SGn apartment. > Pay to freight + pay again to chuck on arrival?

We also gave away our sofas, shame as they were $$$, and would go better in the new place that the LLs tacky tat. But they were big, so too risky. [We gave them away to some lucky F+F].

IKEA TV console, coffee table, dining table + chairs, bookshelves > out, and replaced as needs be. Shame about the chairs but that's pragmatism.
In an ideal world you'd re-flatpack any flatpack furniture before getting quotes, but as time flies that idea tends to get side-tracked.

Plus before we packed up we had two room-to-room spring-cleans, chucking out everything that was out of date (documents etc), surplus to needs (some books, clothes, shoes, a couple of old suitcases etc), or duplicated, like 101 drinking glasses, etc. Some of such stuff can be hard to chuck since 'it still works fine and has use!'. But once you get going in a semi-ruthless way you'll be surprised what you can accept ditching. In a strange way it comes to border on a cathartic process... we have used this two-step approach on our last few moves. You also find that between step 1 and 2 you remain in spring-clean mode, so daily you're still subconsciously judging stuff that might end up getting chucked in v2, or simply gets chucked out in the interim (try looking at the expiry dates in your spice/herb jar shelf and you'll see what I mean! ).

Spring clean no.2, a month or two after no.1 was interesting. At that point quite a lot of stuff that survived no.1, as we couldn't quite bear to let it go, went. By the end of the 2nd, we really had been through every single thing we owned down to kitchen utensils and socks!

A mistake we made was not starting the process long-enough in advance. I think we got our freight quotes part-way through no.1. And of course they will quote you based upon what is there today in front of them. We did point out that items X, Y, Z etc won't be coming but still they hugely over-quoted us. Add to that at least 10 metre/3 boxes were no more than 10-15% full... and we still went over our volume budget. Hence had to pay the increment to the employer. But if we hadn't been ruthless in the clear-outs, gawd knows what the excess volume would have been!

I turned the SG job offer down. I received another offer in HK that was substantially higher than the SG offer. Quality of life sacrificed for cash. so we will stick it out here a few more years!


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